Ye Have Done it Unto Me

4 Apr

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, in Bay Village, Ohio, installed a statue of Jesus, and in less than half an hour, the police department received a complaint about a homeless person sleeping on a park bench. “We’re glad to temporarily host this statue of Homeless Jesus,” the church tweeted, “to raise awareness of homelessness in Cleveland and remind us that all people are created in the image of God.”

This morning, a friend sent me an article from Time Magazine, outlining the problems facing the homeless during the Covid crisis.

When West Virginia declared a state of emergency to arrest the coronavirus, the social network that aids the homeless froze along with everything else. Charities that offered daily meals and warming stations shut down. Volunteers, many elderly, were too afraid to work in the soup kitchens they usually ran. There was suddenly no place to eat or go to the bathroom. “Our homeless community found themselves being told to stay entirely outdoors,” says Kate Marshall, a charity worker in Wheeling, a city in the state’s northern panhandle. “There was not one indoor place to go from March until fall of 2020.”

The article goes on to state that, being ordered to shelter in place, deaths among the homeless rose from an average of 2 to 4 per year to a total of 22, a seven-fold increase. In San Francisco, the department of public health says deaths tripled over the past year in an unhoused population of 8,035. In Los Angeles, home to a vast homeless population tallied at 41,290, deaths increased by 32%, per the online news organization Capital & Main. Homeless deaths in Washington, D.C., soared by 54%. In New York City, the Coalition for the Homeless reported a death rate up 75%.

I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, I was naked and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

Matthew 25:43

One Response to “Ye Have Done it Unto Me”

  1. tiggerlyss April 4, 2021 at 3:47 pm #

    Yes and as the moratorium preventing evictions ends for many homelessness will continue to increase.

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